More than 800 American energy and Earth science researchers have signed a letter to Donald Trump outlining six steps they’re urging him to take to address human-caused climate change to protect “America’s economy, national security, and public health and safety.” The letter is accompanied by a public change.org petition to “Tell Trump To #ActOnClimate.” Here […]

James Delingpole is an invective-hurling anti-climate science columnist who has candidly admitted that he doesn’t bother to read scientific papers, calling himself a “an interpreter of interpretations.”

Kratom (previously) is a widely used herb that has been very effective in treating opioid withdrawal and other chronic, hard-to-treat conditions — it also became very controversial this year because the DEA decided, without evidence, to class it as a dangerous drug, and then changed its mind (unprecedented!) after a mass-scale petition that included interventions […]

The Black Friday Mac Bundle 2.0 is one of the Boing Boing Store’s best-selling Mac bundles yet, and it’s about to come to an end. If you don’t get your copy now, here’s what you’ll be missing:This bundle comes packing 9 top-rated Mac apps in one package, at the hugely discounted price of just $23.99. […]

The Boing Boing Store’s Gift Guide is full of ideas for pretty much anyone in your life like hipster ice cub trays, Xbox controllers, Halo Boards, and even diamond necklaces. As always, all products in the Boing Boing Store come at great discounts, too. Shop by price bucket starting at under $20. Under $20:Bloxx Jumbo Ice Trays […]

Unlike traditional lighters, the SaberLight features an electronic plasma beam that’s both rechargeable and butane-free. This sleek lighter is even approved by TSA, so you’ll never be stuck buying lighters you’ll just have to throw away partially used. For some people, like me, this is a pretty big game-changer. The SaberLight’s beam is actually both hotter and cleaner […]

I’m still having trouble adjusting to the idea that Mars is a real place. Not just a collection of instrument readings and hubble images, or a vague fantasy. It’s somewhere you could actually be, just the same as how you’re here now. Sort of like Montana, but farther away. The banality of that is exactly what’s so amazing.

And then… Try to imagine all this sequence of landing and preparations as you were standing there and watching. Friggin metal spider with rocket engines lowers this car sized rover, flies away and crashes. This rover then sits there for couple sols without any movement. But from time to time it makes some tiny sounds, moves it’s robotic arm, turns camera. And sits there again for hours. Zaps a tiny rock with laser. On one sol it starts moving. Moves couple meters here and there, turns around, goes silent again. It’s like from some sci-fi book, except we actually are (let’s get back to Earth) here and experience it. Not directly, but.. Hey, how cool is that every day we commute to work, hang out with friends and have new pictures coming to our pockets from another friggin planet hundreds of millions kilometres away. I think I need a drink now.

It blew my mind a few years back when I looked a couple of detailed Martian panoramas, imagining what it would be like to stand on a distant world, totally different from our own in many ways, yet so much like it in others.

You look at a distant hill and think for a moment that, if you could climb to the top, you could look down onto some small desert town and a few roads winding here and there.

Then you realize there are no towns – anywhere. No billboards, gas stations, farms, rivers… or people.

Then I realized what a special mindset the first Martian explorers would need to have, to be absolutely alone, millions of miles from home, totally dependent on whatever supplies and rations they brought with them until, hopefully, they returned home.

Unfortunately the only lander with a microphone fitted was the ill-fated Beagle 2.
At a guess it probably sounds mainly just windy, with assorted robot noises.
(although I did make up my own sound effects to the landing video ;)

Yeah. Images are great – in fact I can watch videos like this all day long. But… thinking of hearing the sound of wind howling and whistling over the surface of a world that has never seen humans sends shivers down my spine.

It’s making me cry in ecstasy that the human race has begun actually leaving footprints on Mars. I know that’s been happening for some time, but it’s the first time I see an image of it.
Alina – http://www.squidoo.com/this-is-bucharest

Fantastic and HYPNOTIC!!! Could watch that over and over…and you’re right, the banality of it is precisely what makes it so exciting…that is another world, but it’s really just a place like here on Earth.

Keep in mind, that those Republican members of Congress who have declared war on science, education, teachers, women, senior citizens and God only knows what else, want to cut NASA’s budget so that missions like this won’t occur in our children’s future, let alone ours. Write your elected representatives and tell them not to cut NASA’s budget, not now, or in the future.

Finally after years of vague graphs and fuzzy black and white photos and (for reasons I could never quite grasp, “artificially recolored photos”) Mars finally looks real as in really a real place. This video is epic on so many levels.